North West of Nicaragua

So after our trip out to the Corn Islands in the Caribbean, we headed for Leòn in the north west of Nicaragua. Like Granada, it too has some nice colonial architecture, but seems to have a bit more energy to it than Granada, but just like the rest of the Pacific coast in Central America so far - its god damn hot and dry.

A Nicaraguan Hospital

One of my travel companions, Max, is unable to catch a ball properly, which caused him to fracture his finger - meaning a trip to the hospital in Leòn. All public medical care in Nicaragua seems to be free, as well as prescription drugs (although don't quote me on that). But the hospital we went to was a mess, and resembled more of a warehouse than a hospital. Here are a few pictures, including one guy lying on a stretcher on the floor in a waiting room with a drip attached to him.




Max never had the patience to wait all day for an x-ray, so ended up paying a little in a private clinic to have everything done in no time at all.

Volcàn Momotombo

We were staying in Leòn in the north west of Nicaragua, and the thing that attracted our eye the most was the tallest volcano in Nicaragua; Volcàn Momotombo. Its only 1200 metres odd in altitude, but everything we read about it said it was a fairly difficult ascent.


A local tour company offered a two day trip; 5 hours to ascend, camping near the summit, and a few hours to descend. But we thought, 2 days is surely not necessary for such a short ascent, and climbing a volcano in the midday heat was surely insane. We suggested to the tour company that climbing through the night and arriving at the summit by sunrise - arriving back in Leòn by midday would be a far better option. After a bit of persuasion and a few access permit issues, our tour guide was persuaded.

We headed out of Leòn at about 11:30pm on a Friday night. A hydroelectric power plant holds access to the land approaching the volcano; some photocopied and doctored access permits got us through their property, which officially you're not allowed to enter at night. The Pacific coast in Central America is hot, and this doesn't change at night. So the first three hours of our ascent were spent sweating and hiking up through dry and bare woodlands, searching for the tenuous narrow path that would lead to the most strategic point to start the climb of the volcanic rocks. We eventually reached the start of the 'difficult' part of the climb by 3am.

Our guide had only ever made the climb during daylight, and had failed to tell us back in Leòn, when we were twisting his arm to take us up during the night, that the volcano was always covered completely in cloud until the sun burnt off the moisture in the late morning. Entonces, we could see jack sh*$ when we started to climb beyond the woodlands on the volcano's slopes, only about 2 metres in front of us, and the guide couldn't find the best route of ascent. With only weak head torches, we battled our way up the volcano's slopes, which consisted of small loose volcanic rocks, which acted as ball bearings against each each other as we tried to climb them; constantly slipping backwards - two steps forward, one step back. After a short while trying to find the best route of ascent, our guide, Adam, gave up hope of finding the usual route, and told us just to head straight up. He didn't seem to have the strength of me and Max, and couldn't keep up, I think in fear of letting us down even further, he told us to head on up and he would meet us at the summit.

The next few hours were incredibly tough and painful; we were just scrambling with our feet and grabbing sharp loose volcanic rocks with our hands, all the time in almost complete darkness and cloud, just following the gradient skywards. We finally reached the summit at sunrise; 5:20 am. Though to our dismay, the volcano was completely covered in cloud, by this point we had maybe 1m visibility - we could see no more in the day light than we could in complete darkness. There went our hope of seeing the sunrise over Nicaragua.

We suddenly felt very stupid and in danger; the summit was almost constantly immersed in sulphur clouds (which smell of rotten eggs), it was so strong that one breath caused us to cough and our eyes to sting; to the left of us there was a huge drop into apparent nothingness, above us was the crater and we had no idea what dangers lay ahead, plus the sulphur fumes seemed to get more intense the higher we got higher.

The warm and poisonous sulphur rock beneath our feet

A quick scout to the right revealed stronger sulphur fumes and more extreme terrain. The wind was strong and we became soaked by the surrounding cloud, hence we were damn cold. We tried to take shelter for a while behind some rocks...

... but soon realised our only choice was to descend, a thought we didn't relish as the slopes we climbed up were so steep and unstable, they seemed far more dangerous to climb down than to ascend. We realised it was a pretty naive decision to leave our guide behind; the volcano had become a very powerful and dominating place.

After descending for ten minutes or so we bumped into our guide; he had waited for sunrise before continuing his climb - he was fearing for the worst for us as he had not yet found us, and didn't believe we would make it to the top in the darkness. Por eso, he was very relieved to find us alive and well. We continued the difficult descent together; for me, this was the most difficult part of the trip. I had enjoyed the physical challenge of climbing the 'mound of ball bearings', but descending was hell. The slopes were covered in small loose and sharp volcanic rocks...



We were constantly loosing our balance and falling over as we descended, cutting and bruising our hands even more. The sun started to rise and turn up the heat, and the lack of sleep started to catch up with us. At one point we all laid down in the rocks and slept for half an hour, only to be rudely awakened by the heat and the humidity.


We did eventually make it down to the hot safety of Lake Managua, and although our view from the summit was completely obscured by clouds, we did get some great views and photos on our descent, both of the volcano itself and the surrounding land. Though we both agreed that the trip wasn't exactly fun, climbing at night was fool hardy, and leaving the poor guide behind was frankly naive.